RE: Acting offended when you have no argument

Sonoma CA

Description

I tend to think your description of the dems reaction is a bit of an exaggeration, but their reaction is inconsequential when you consider the accusations. Republicans continually make those statements about Democrats in an attempt to insinuate that today’s Democratic Party is the party of slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth, and anyone in their right mind would find such an implication offensive. You can cherry pick facts to fit your narrative all you want, but it won’t win you any political arguments. History is a little more complicated than that. Here’s a more accurate synopsis of the two parties; The very same red, cracker barrel states that vote Republican today are the very same states that were Democratic during the civil war and after reconstruction. Democrats depended for a century on these SOUTHERN Jim Crow states, which is why Republicans were dominant in presidential elections in the late 19th and early 20th century. That all changed with the Great Depression when Democrats aligned with poor farmers and workers to create a formidable labor-based majority under FDR (He was elected to four terms! before a 50s constitutional amendment initiated by Republicans limited presidential terms to two). Since racism in America was pretty widespread, the Dems stayed in power through the 30s and 40s by appealing to the union working men (and they were all men) in the north while holding on to its Jim Crow white cracker vote in the south (which wasn’t hard because blacks were not allowed to vote in most southern states). By the late 50s this was getting to be a problem: trying to support progressive Demos in the north while depending on southern anti-Republican (i.e. anti-emancipation) Democrats in the south. The 1960 ticket of John Kennedy (northern liberal) and LBJ (Texas senator) underscored this tension. (To show the difference between then and now, Kennedy won the 1960 election by 100,000 votes and paper-thin electoral state margins, but Nixon conceded the next day). After Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ, while he waged war in Vietnam, became a flaming domestic liberal: passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and creating Medicare…By 1968 Nixon was running again for President and trying out the “new” Republican “southern strategy” by which he campaigned through the south as a (wink, wink) “conservative” candidate (i.e. racist). Despite the fact that Alabama Governor George Wallace was also running for President (and took five southern states’ electoral votes) Nixon’s point was made and by 1972 the South went almost completely Republican in Nixon's landslide whipping of liberal Demo George McGovern (who barely won two northern states!). South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond changed his party registration from Democrat to Republican. It was a big deal. If Jimmy Carter hadn’t been governor of Georgie (and therefore took several Southern states in the 1976 election following Nixon’s impeachment), a Democrat would not have won. Sure enough, Reagan picked up Nixon’s southern strategy in 1980 by opening his presidential campaign in Jefferson, Mississippi (where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1965). He complained about “welfare queens” and “shiftless unemployed” (which everyone understood to mean black mothers and black men) and swept Carter out of office in another GOP landslide. Republicans dominated presidential elections until 1992 when Bill Clinton (another southern governor—Arkansas) broke the solid south open again. And if Ross Perot hadn’t run in that election and pulled votes from George H.W. Bush, Clinton would not have won. Really, it wasn’t until Barak Obama that the Demos successfully reassembled a coalition that could appeal to both urban voters and rural farmers impacted by the Great Recession. And if the Demos had stayed home (as they did with Hillary), the Republicans would have been guaranteed a win. However, social media has changed everything now. Trump, with his dominance of the GOP, has demonstrated what a soulless carnival barker can do if he can tweet to an audience of 66 million Americans his most foolish and stupid thoughts. They believe him because they all think they are having personal contact with a celebrity! Now that Rump has left the White House, he is trying desperately to put together an entertainment and “news” operation to sustain a high celebrity visibility. If Qanon can succeed, I suppose anything is possible.